Why Allegiant Airline Charges $35 for Overhead Bins, How Customers React – An Analysis
Effective April 4th 2012, Allegiant Airlines charges $35 for cabin baggages. You can keep your “luggages” (may be a laptop or purse) under the space that’s in front of your seat. Anything else, should be kept on the overhead bin and that’s charged.
Charging Options:
- If you check in the bags online – your fee may vary from $10 to $30. This depends on various factors like your origin, destination, connecting flights, distance etc
- If you check in the bags at airport (offline) – you will be charged $35.
Allegiant isn’t the first to do this. Spirit Airlines started charging a whopping $45 for cabin baggages in 2010 itself (yes, that’s two years earlier). And, reportedly they made $50 million from overhead bin charges.
In 2010, Spirit started it. In 2012, Allegiant is following suit. Will other carriers adopt this model? We have to wait and see.
From airlines perspective, here is why we think Allegiant is charging for overhead bins:
- To be fair with travellers who bring more check-in bags versus travellers with less bags. Passenger A with 2 check-in bags will be charged the same ticket fare as Passenger B with zero check-in bags. Now, Passenger A have to pay $$ and Passenger B pays nothing.
- Airline pays less money to Airport. How? It really takes time for passengers to place all their bags in the overhead bin. Sometimes, the overhead bins space gets filled and still there will be bags left to accommodate. Cabin crew moves those to the cargo section. Sometimes the check-in bags doesn’t fit in the overhead bin (we have seen these scenarios), the cabin crew then moves these type of bags to the cargo section (though the airline’s check-in counter shouldn’t have allowed these bags to be checked in at first place). It doesn’t stop here. Sometimes, passengers bags are placed 20 rows away from their seat, so it takes time for the passengers to find their bags while deplaning. Now, all these costs time to the airline. This means, airline have to pay extra $$ to the airport, all further schedules of that plane gets affected and the customer satisfaction (because of delay) is not met. Customers might also miss their connecting flights in case of flight delays.
- Airline cuts cost. How? More the number of check-in bags, heavier the plane becomes, more the fuel consumption.
- Airline saves time. How? By this move, Airline is pushing the customer to check-in bags online, there by the time waiting at check-in counter is reduced, the counter agent also saves time.
But, from customers perspective, here is what we think is going to happen:
- Customers will have a red light flashing in their mind the moment they think “let me fly Allegiant”. Because, $35 is really too much to pay for. This is a psychological blocker/barrier.
- Even if customers decide to fly Allegiant, they will be extremely careful in their packing. Even a guitar is going to be given lot of thought – “should I really take this? Is this needed?”
- Customers might spend a lot more time at the check-in counter arguing with the agent – “I am sure my bags will fit under the seat space, don’t charge me $35″. “No, it won’t fit” – these type of arguments.
- Customers who don’t like this move by the airline might spread negative waves across social channels.
We browsed the web for customer views and here are few funny comments by people:
- Why not charges $5 less and remove the padding from seats
- Can you start charging for the oxygen? Shall we start bringing our own oxygen tank?
Author: Karthick Prabu
